Fables often warn by example, with an animal character’s mistakes leading to their death. Grievous errors, the morals further emphasize, can be avoided by a reader who learns from the fable’s message. The two medieval fables discussed below have no deaths within the narrative, only the threat of it. Both feature parent animals—a raven or crow in one, a doe in the other—teaching their children to be cautious of humans, and to pay close attention to their actions. These fables, in which the animal parents and their children have the ability to speak to one another, depict a means of learning to fear that is usually ascribed to humans only: verbal information. (Two other ways of learning fear, which have been studied in a number of species, are through direct conditioning and through observing the behavior of others; the latter is sometimes called “vicarious learning” or “social fear transmission.”)
The two fables in question appear one after the other, in two collections. One version is in a Latin prose collection in the “Romulus” tradition, called the Romulus Anglicus cunctis, edited by Léopold Hervieux from a fifteenth-century manuscript.[1] Another version is found in the Fables attributed to Marie de France.[2] The fable of The Raven and His Chicks, as found in Hervieux’s edition, is below, followed by my translation.
Corvus consedit in arbore quadam secus viam et cum eo Pulli sui. Sedens igitur Pullos quos habebat monebat attencius ut cauti essent. Deambulabat autem homo eadem via, et dixit Corvus ad pullos : Hic est ille, quem nos cavere maxime oportet, et vos, si videritis eum molinantem ad terram, fugite velociter. Cui unus Pullorum respondit : Eciam si se non inclinaverit, appropinquantem fugere volo. Bonum est, inquit pater, et de cetero per te non sollicitabor; sed alios Pullos meos, ut cauti sint, ammonebo.
A raven settled onto a certain tree beside a road, and with him his chicks. While he was sitting, he then carefully advised the chicks that he had, so that they would be cautious. Then a man came walking along the same road, and the raven said to his chicks: This is the one that we need to be the most careful about, and you, if you see him bending to the ground, flee quickly. To which one of the chicks responded: Even if he doesn’t bend over, I intend to flee when he approaches. Good, said the father, and I won’t otherwise worry for you. But my other chicks, I’ll warn them to be cautious.
Raven from Aberdeen University Library MS 24, f. 37r
The implication of the Romulus version of this fable, as I see it, is that it’s good to be on the safe side. While the father had used the example of a human bending over as something to be particularly watchful for, presumably because he could be picking up something to throw at the birds, one of his sons declares that he will flee at the man’s approach regardless, and it is this assertion which dispels his father’s worry for his future safety; it is yet to be seen whether his other offspring will be as cautious.
Marie’s version of The Raven and His Chicks, while it similarly portrays a parent teaching their young to fear humans, ultimately has a much different message about caution. The parent corvid in Marie’s version (a crow rather than a raven) specifies that his son ought to watch out for a man bending over to pick up a stick or a stone, and flee at the sight (lines 5–8).
“If I don’t see him bend over, and he doesn’t have anything in his hand, then do I need to move?” inquires the chick (Si jeo nel vei, fet il, beisser / n[e]’en ses meins rien manïer, / [me] dei jeo dunc[es] remüer, lines 9–11). At this point, the parent declares that he needn’t teach his son anything further, and that he is off to aid his other children. The implication is that the young crow is discerning when it comes to human actions and what they portend, and that he knows to be cautious, but not excessively so. And indeed, animals who regularly encounter human (or non-human) threats must strike a balance between their own safety and the need to find crucial resources such as food.
The raven fable, in the Romulus Anglicus cunctis, is left without a moral. In both the Romulus and Marie’s collection, the raven/crow fable is immediately preceded by the fable of The Hind Instructing Her Fawn. In this fable, a mother deer similarly warns her offspring to be wary of humans, such as the hunter they see nearby. However, rather than simply absorbing her advice, the son talks back, arguing that the hunter must in fact be afraid of them. After all, why else would he be sneaking around and hiding in the bushes? The mother reiterates that the man, and particularly the weapons he bears, are deadly. The moral, in the Romulus, is that “fools don’t foresee harms or dangers and don’t fear them, until they feel them” (Sic stulti dampna vel pericula non prevident nec pertimescunt, donec ea senciunt).[3] The naïve young fawn seems to represent such fools, whereas his wiser mother can more accurately read human behavior and identify threats.
Of course, in real life, a young bird or deer would learn fear from another animal’s sudden change in body language, or their alarm call, or even their scent, not from a verbal explanation. Humans, though, can learn through storytelling. Research in psychology has suggested that children readily learn to fear through verbal information—particularly when the information comes from an adult, rather than a peer.[4] Fables both show and tell, in a sense, when they combine memorable narratives about another’s ill-fated end (or prudent evasion of disaster) with explicit moralizations. These stories are not meant to be taken literally; after all, The Raven and His Chicks isn’t meant to teach young readers that they should run away at the sight of a man bending to the ground to pick up a rock. Rather, readers are prompted to extrapolate from the animal scenario and apply this to more abstruse, though no less real, dangers. Fables teach, perhaps, not simply what to fear, but how to fear. Fear can be life-saving, but excessive or unnecessary fear can prove maladaptive. As for what might constitute a maladaptive level of fear, the two versions of the raven/crow fable discussed above seem to draw the line in different places; the Romulus version advocates greater wariness than Marie’s version, which suggests that wisdom lies in knowing both when to flee and when not to.
Emily Mahan PhD in Medieval Studies University of Notre Dame
[1] Léopold Hervieux, Les fabulistes latins depuis le siècle d’Auguste jusqu’à la fin du Moyen Âge, vol. 2 (Paris : Firmin-Didot, 1884), p. 612.
[2] Charles Brucker, ed., Marie de France: Les Fables, édition critique accompagnée d’une introduction, d’une traduction, de notes et d’un glossaire, 2nd ed. (Paris–Louvain: Peeters, 1998), pp. 334-7.
[3] Léopold Hervieux, Les fabulistes latins, vol. 2, p. 612.
[4] A. P. Field et al., “Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf: a prospective paradigm to test Rachman’s indirect pathways in children,” Behaviour Research and Therapy 39, 11 (2001): 1259-76. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11686263/
While I think it is true, as I have argued before, that the Greek church never considered the events of 1054 as marking any kind of definitive break with the Latin West, this does not mean that the theological writers at the time ignored the sudden and dramatic juxtaposition of Eastern and Western liturgical, ritual, and cultural practices. Indeed, almost the reverse is true: the decades following 1054 witnessed a flourishing of a genre that has been termed the “Byzantine lists,” essentially short treatises outlining a series of objectionable practices that were common (or were believed by the authors to be common) among Latin Christians. Typically inspired by the letter of Michael Cerularius to Peter of Antioch, which added several complaints about the Latins to a list of issues that were under more active discussion between the two sides in 1054, these lists commonly discussed issues that pertained to liturgical or ritual practice. Greek Christians regularly complained that their Latin confrères did not celebrate baptism correctly, did not fast from the correct foods or with sufficient rigor, and did not sing the word “alleluia” during church services at the correct times of the year, among other problems.
The primary study of the genre as a whole remains Tia Kolbaba’s monograph The Byzantine Lists: Errors of the Latins, published in 2000 [1]. Kolbaba maintains that the composition of these lists was fundamentally a project of Byzantine cultural consciousness, a way of emphasizing (or constructing) the unity, antiquity, and correctness of Eastern Roman practice by way of comparison to the “other,” in this case, the Latins. These lists were intended as emotional appeals to a broad Greek audience, and were somewhat low-brow in both style and content: theologically difficult issues like the filioque are presented side-by-side with complaints that Latin bishops wear silk rather than woolen robes, with no effort to rank the comparative importance of the various complaints.
Given Kolbaba’s argument that these lists of complaints are fundamentally inward looking, focused more on the Eastern Romans than the Western ones, it is especially interesting that one of the earliest examples of the genre was not written within the oikoumene at all, but rather under the political authority of the Kievan Rus’. Ephraim, the metropolitan of Kiev from around 1055 to the early 1060s, was an ethnic Greek recently transplanted in the eastern Slavic territory when he authored a list of twenty-eight distinct complaints against the Latin Christians [2]. Most of these complaints concern topics that are familiar to students of the East-West conflict: the filioque, the use of azymes (unleavened bread) in the celebration of the Eucharist, the practice of fasting on the Sabbath (Saturdays). Indeed, the complaints in Ephraim’s treatise echo the issues raised in the 1054 conflict so completely that he either had received a thorough report of the events or was still personally resident in Constantinople during the time of the Humbertine legation.
Miniatures from the Kiev Psalter, 1397CE.
Ephraim, however, was also cognizant of his new cultural context, and Igor Čičurov, who first printed an edition of the text, points out instances where Ephraim used words or referenced topics that would have been far more familiar to a Slavic audience. For example, Ephraim attributes the sacramental use of azymes to the Vandals, noting that this group of people are now called the “Nemitzioi” (“τῶν νῦν Νεμιτζίων καλοθμένων”) a native Slavic term for Germans (i.e., non-Slavs): “немитции” or “немцы” [3]. Furthermore, Ephraim deviated from his literary model, Michael Cerularius, in accusing the Latins of not giving baptizands the names of saints, but instead the names of various animals (lions, bears, leopards, etc.) [4]. This complaint, Čičurov notes, is not made in any list of complaints against the Latins composed within the Eastern Roman Empire itself. Instead, it is only from the Slavic context, where the practice of retaining a non-Christian name after baptism was common, that this issue was raised [5].
This complaint brings us back to Kolbaba’s thesis, that the so-called Byzantine lists had more to do with policing cultural practice and ritual purity within the Eastern Christian world than in correcting behavior in the West. Constantinopolitan authors of similar works, although they surely would have objected to this naming practice, apparently did not see the need to mention it among their complaints. In Ephraim’s case, however, we see an ethnic Greek confronted with the very foreign (to him) practice of retaining a non-Christian name. His attack on the Latin practice would equally have served as a critique of the princely families of the Rus’ by whom he was surrounded. We are left, in the end, with a strengthening of Kolbaba’s central argument: “[…] the intended audience was not Latin. There are anti-Latin works which were intended to convince Latins, but the lists are not among them” [6] Instead, we should see Ephraim’s work, at least in part, the effort of a Greek clergyman to enforce the norms of Constantinopolitan orthodox theology and practice in the Eastern Christian hinterland.
Nick Kamas PhD in Medieval Studies University of Notre Dame
[1] Tia M. Kolbaba, The Byzantine Lists: Errors of the Latins (Urbana and Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 2000). See especially chapter 1, pp. 9-19, for the argument on the purpose and context of the lists.
[2] For some biographical details on Ephraim of Kiev, see Gerhard Podskalsky, Christentum und Theologische Literatur in der Kiever Rus’ (988-1237) (München: C.H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1982), 285-286. Further details, including a helpful bibliography, are in А. В. Назаренко, “Кое-что о Двух Русских Митрополитах XI в. Ефреме Киевском и Ефреме Переяславском” Древняя Русь: Вопросы Медиевистики 75.1 (2019): 87-90.
[3] “Антилатинский Трактат Киевского Митрополита Ефрема (ок. 1054/55-1061/62 гг.) в Составе Греческого Канонического Сборника Vat. Gr. 828,” Вестник ПСТГУ 19.3 (2007): 127. This publication in Russian is a revision of an earlier German article: I. Čičurov, “Ein antilateinischer Traktat des Kiever Metropoliten Ephraim,” Fontes Minores X (Frankfurt am Main, 1998): 319–356. The edition of the Greek text appears only in the German version.
[4] Traktat 18, in Čičurov, “Ein antilateinischer Traktat,” 344.
“That ‘Poetry is the cradle of philosophy’ is axiomatic”
(John of Salisbury, Metalogicon I.22).
Coëtivy Master (Henri de Vulcop?) (French, active about 1450 – 1485), Philosophy Presenting the Seven Liberal Arts to Boethius, Google Art Project.
It is a truth generally acknowledged that in the Middle Ages a liberal arts education consisted of the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy). Poetry –what we might call “literature”– was primarily taught by grammarians and rhetoricians in the Middle Ages. Literary scholars, like Rita Copeland and Marjorie Woods, have therefore been very motivated to study exactly what the language disciplines of Grammar and Rhetoric entailed and precisely how they were taught in order to have a better sense of what the study of literature must have looked like in this period. Their works are indispensable for the study of medieval literature and truly are the bulk of where instruction in poetics lay in the Middle Ages. And yet, once cannot stop there.
Knowing exactly where to put poetry was something that clearly bothered many medieval philosophers. While today we might assume that poetry would clearly be associated with the Trivium, or the arts dedicated to words, specifically grammar and rhetoric, certain medieval thinkers located it within logic and also the Quadrivium, or the arts of number. Understanding why can help us to understand the multi-faceted way in which the medieval mind approached poetry in particular and the literary arts more generally.
Étienne Colaud, “John of Salisbury teaching philosophy,” frontispiece miniature of the Policraticus by John of Salisbury, BnF Ms.1145, folio 3 recto, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
In the twelfth century when there were major curricular changes afoot in schools and universities, John of Salisbury maintained that poetry belonged to the art of grammar although it was closely allied with rhetoric. “Art,” writes John of Salisbury, “is a system that reason has devised in order to expedite, by its own short cut, our ability to do things within our natural capacities. Reason neither provides nor professes to provide the accomplishment of the impossible;” Instead, reason pursues the possible by means of an efficient plan, what the Greeks would call a methodon (Metalogicon I.11, p.33). As J.J. Murphy writes in the Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, Vol. II: The Middle Ages:
In medieval terminology the Latin word ars (plural: artes) denoted a body of principles relating to a specific activity such as painting, music, preaching, or writing. By extension the term was also used for a written treatise on the subject of a particular art […] The term ‘art’ or ars when applied to such a treatise indicates a discussion of what the ancient Greeks would have called techné ––‘technique’ or ‘craft’ –– rather than an abstract or theoretical discussion of a subject (p.42).
The practitioner of an art is therefore called an artifex or craftsman, and the study of the art consisted of both the intrinsic principles for practice and the extrinsic practice of the art itself.[1] When art is understood in this way, craftsmen generally agree that the person able to produce art is more skilled that the person skilled at conveying the principles underlying art. While poetry was clearly a craft that required a practitioner to study a method of practice, it was by no means clear where it ought to fit in the medieval curriculum of the arts.
John of Salisbury reports that some people thought poetry should be its own subject (shockingly!) because so much of it is clearly a “product of nature’s workshop” (Metalogicon I.18). The close tie between poetry and nature formed the basis of their argument, but John of Salisbury warns pragmatically that if poetry is removed from grammar, “its mother and the nurse of its study,” the study of poetry could be “dropped from the roll of liberal studies.” In other words, everyone studies grammar, which in those days often included a careful study of works like Virgil’s Aeneid. If poetry became its own subject, people might not take it at all!
English: Arabic translation of Aristotle’s Poetics by Abu Bishr Matta Français : Poétique (Aristote) en arabe – Abu Bishr Matta العربية: فن الشعر لأرسطوطاليس نقل أبي بشر متى – من مخطوطة باريس ٢٣٤٦ http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8422956q/f273.image
Some philosophers thought that poetry actually belonged to the subject of logic. These people were especially concerned about how to classify Aristotle’s Poetics. In Ancient Greece, Aristotle had written a group of works (one might even say lecture notes) on logic when teaching at the Lyceum. His followers, the Peripatetics, classified these works as the Organon, meaning instrument or tool, because they saw them as instrumental in preparing for the study of philosophy. The Latin West had only select works from the Organon until their increased contact with Arabic philosophers like Avicenna, who wrote a commentary on the Poetics. Following the Greek commentators on Aristotle, most of the Arabic (and subsequently Latin scholastic) commentators saw Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics as the seventh and eighth works of Aristotle’s Organon. In their zeal, therefore, to comment on the entirety of the Organon, some Latin scholastic commentators, like Herman the German, viewed poetics as a part of Logic.
As surprising as it might be to think that poetry should be considered primarily within the context of “logic,” there is strong evidence that poetry was also studied within the context of the quadrivium. And yet, many medieval thinkers, the Pythagorean believed that number lay at the root of creation itself. For example, Dante writes in the Convivio when commenting on the beauty of a canzone:
All of you who cannot perceive the meaning of this canzone, do not reject it on that account, but consider its beauty: considerable for the way it is constructed, which is the concern of the grammarians; the ordering of its discourse, which is the concern of the rhetoricians; and for the metrical numbering of its parts, which is the concern of poets. (II.xi.9–10)
The key word to focus upon here is numbering. Familiarity with the Commedia and its frequent references to the starsis enough to convince a reader that one aspect of the numbering that Dante had in mind was the medieval discipline of astronomy, but there is also good reason to think that Dante had music in mind. Some of this evidence is textual…the numerous references to music in the Purgatorio and Paradiso…, but some of this evidence can be found in Boethius.
The standard textbook for the teaching of music theory in the Middle Ages was Boethius’ Fundamentals of Music, and until 1255, it was not uncommon for most educated men , including Dante, who undertook a liberal arts education to have at least some instruction in the subject.[2] As a result, even 11th and 12th c. philosophers like Anselm and Peter Abelard wrote sacred poetry and song. In this book, Boethius speaks of poetry as a subset of one kind of music.
Boethius begins his work on music with a philosophical justification for its study. Citing Plato and Pythagoras, he observes that music is so deeply engrained in human nature that from a young age it has the power to move human souls, transform their character, and even affect their health and sense of well-being (I.1.180–185). He explains that this phenomenon should leave us with no doubt that “the order of our soul and body seems to be related somehow through those same ratios by which subsequent argument will demonstrate sets of pitches, suitable for melody, are joined together and united” (I.1.186). Since “music is so naturally united with us that we cannot be free from it even if we so desired,” then “the power of the intellect ought to be summoned so that this art, innate through nature, may be mastered, comprehended through knowledge” (I.187). In this way, Boethius justifies the study of music because it reflects something about the fundamental nature of the human soul.
English: “King David, Lady Music and musicians”. In manuscript “De institutione musica”. Boetius. Español: “El Rey David, la Señora Música y los músicos”. Del manuscrito “De institutione musica”. Boecio. Date Original: 1941 – 1942. Copy upload: 2010.Source: http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000009OM1.jpg
In this work, Boethius identifies three kinds of music––cosmic, human, and instrumental. This categorization implies that the human response to music is rooted in the nature of not only the human soul but of the cosmos (I.2). Cosmic music, or the music of the spheres, is the harmonious sound produced when the stars in their courses and the diversity of seasons move swiftly together in harmonious union (1.2.187–188). Human music does not concern the music produced by humans. Rather, it is the music found in the harmony of soul and body in a human being. Boethius describes this music as “a careful tuning of low and high pitches as though producing one consonance” (I.2.189). It unites not only the rational and animal parts of the soul, but the parts of the body and the body’s union with soul. Boethius promises to speak about this subject later, but he never returns to it. Instrumental music, for Boethius, includes the harmonious sounds produced by tension of strengths, human breath, percussion, etc. (I.2.189). This kind of music is what most people today associate with music, but Boethius’ understands this music to operate according to the same mathematical principles of both cosmic and human music. This mathematical concordance explains the reasons for music’s profound effect on the human soul.
Although the producer of cosmic and human music is ultimately God, instrumental music must be produced by a human musician. Boethius’ definition of a human musician broadens the horizon within which music itself is narrowly considered today. He identifies three classes of musician: the instrumentalist, the poet, and the rational judger of music (I.34.224).
The instrumentalist is no greater than a “slave” because one does not need the faculty of reason in order to produce music upon an instrument.
The second class of poets are presumably higher than slaves, but Boethius remarks that even the poets create songs by instinct rather than reason. One might recall here Lady Philosophy’s attack upon the Muses as “harpies” because their base songs only continued to prolong Boethius’ misery.
The third class of musician is the one with the ability to judge rhythm, melody, and composition. Since this class exercises reason in their experience of music, they alone should be considered worthy of esteem. This final judgment may seem harsh, but it was a common opinion in his day; Augustine repeats a similar idea in Demusica.3 In fact, both men express their love of hearing music with some guilt, even though Augustine insists that music should remain in churches (Conf.9.6, 14 and 10, 33, 49–50; Consol.I.2 and IV.6.6). In other words, Boethius repeats the infamous attack of Plato on the poets, even though he himself writes poetry in the Consolatio.
It is startling to consider that Boethius includes both poets and song-writers within the class of musicians. Any time a human being takes the mathematics of sound seriously in the construction of a work of verbal art, they are a musician, whether or not the words constructed are intended for accompaniment with music. Second, Boethius boldy asserts that the ability to judge music is superior to the ability to craft and perform music. Within this model of music, the music theorist and literary critic are both superior to the musician and the poet. The ability to judge is always to be preferred over the ability to craft. In the long war between philosophy and poetry, philosophy always wins.
Whether or not poets like Dante would have agreed with Boethius that the practice of their art was inferior to those who judge art, especially since arts are, by definition, intended to be practiced, it is interesting to consider that medieval poets, as a kind of musician, may have conceived themselves to be craftsman that used the tools of grammar, logic, rhetoric, and music (or the entire quadrivium if one is Boethius or Dante!) to construct their art while looking up at the stars.
Lesley-Anne Dyer Williams Public Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow Medieval Institute University of Notre Dame
Further Reading
Ancius Manlius Severinus Boethius. Fundamentals of Music. Edited by Claude V. Palisca. Translated by Calvin M. Bower. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989.
Copeland, Rita, and Ineke Sluiter. Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric: Language Arts and Literary Theory, AD 300 -1475. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Dante Alighieri. Dante: Convivio. Translated by Andrew Frisardi. New edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
Fournier, Michael. “Boethius and the Consolation of the Quadrivium.” Medievalia et Humanistica, no. 34 (2008): 1–21.
John of Salisbury. The Metalogicon. Translated by Daniel D McGarry. Berkeley: Calif. U.P., 1962.
Martianus Capella. Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts. Translated by William Harris Stahl, Richard Johnson, and E.L. Burge. Vol. II: The Marriage of Philology and Mercury. 2 vols. Records of Western Civilization 84. Columbia University Press, 1992.
Minnis, A. J., and A. B Scott, eds. “”Placing the Poetics: Herman the German; An Anonymous Question on the Nature of Poetry.” In Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism c.1100–1375: The Commentary Tradition, Revised. Oxford: OUP, 1991.
O’Daly, Gerard J. P. The Poetry of Boethius. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
Stahl, William Harris, Richard Johnson, and E.L. Burge. Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts. Vol. I: The Quadrivium of Martianus Capella. 2 vols. Records of Civilization, Sources and Studies 84. New York: Columbia University Press, 1971.
Woods, Marjorie Curry. Classroom Commentaries: Teaching the Poetria Nova across Medieval and Renaissance Europe. 1 edition. Text and Context. Ohio State University Press, 2017.
Woods, Marjorie Curry. Weeping for Dido: The Classics in the Medieval Classroom. 1st ed. Vol. 1. E. H. Gombrich Lecture Series. United States: Princeton University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691188744.
